“Deliverance” actor Bill McKinney dies at 80

Character actor Bill McKinney, notorious for his villainous roles in such films as 1972’s Deliverance, died Thursday in Southern California’s Valley Presbyterian Hospice of cancer, his family announced. He was 80.

“An avid smoker for 25 years of his younger life, he died of cancer of the esophagus,” read a family announcement on his Facebook page.

In Deliverance, McKinney played a mountain man who did something very nasty to river tripper Ned Beatty, ordering him to “squeal like a pig.” Later in the film, Burt Reynolds’s character killed the mountain man with an arrow through the chest.

He guested on Showdown, a 1995 episode of Batman: The Animated Series, as renegade bounty hunger Jonah Hex, who stands in the way of Ra’s Al Ghul’s attempts in the 1800s to destroy the fledgling railroad and seize control of the United States government.

Born in Chattanooga, Tennessee on September 12, 1931, the 5’10” actor was a “strong, compassionate, motivated individual,” stepson Richard Booth told CNN on Friday.

Bill McKinney is survived by son Clinton and several former wives. He finished a Doritos commercial two weeks before his death, and was also working on his biography with his writing partner, his family said.